Teenagers should be free to study a “more flexible” business-oriented GCSE combining up to three languages, under radical proposals to make foreign languages more accessible.

In a wide-ranging review of language teaching across all schools, Lord Dearing, the education reformer, said that language lessons should be compulsory for seven-year-olds from 2010 and secondaries should be measured against how many pupils are studying languages such as French, German or Mandarin.

Universities were also urged to boost take-up by making languages a criterion in their selection process, following the lead of University College London, which asks applicants for a foreign language GCSE. Pupils should also be able to learn Mandarin, Urdu or Farsi as well as French and German in an attempt to use expertise.

Ministers asked Lord Dearing to undertake the study in an effort to increase the take-up of languages in England, after the numbers taking French and German at GCSE plummeted once they became optional for England’s 14 year olds in 2004. Since then languages have become a class issue, Lord Dearing’s report said.

The fall in teenagers taking languages was “closely related to social class”, and to their later performance in GCSE. As a result, only half the pupils entitled to free school meals gained a language GCSE compared with the better off.

To tackle this growing schism, Lord Dearing called for £50 million a year to be invested in teaching languages, for the curriculum to be overhauled and for information and communication technology and video-conferencing to be used to help to capture the imagination of the young.

Languages needed to be made more relevant to reach a wider number of pupils, Lord Dearing said, but he shied away from making the subject compulsory for 14-year-olds and beyond.

He confirmed that teenagers were put off language GCSEs because they were considered hard and said that this must be investigated. More controversially, he said that there was a strong case for an alternative GCSE in up to three languages, “with an international or business orientation and involving the development of a more limited range of skills”.

This may appeal to the more vocationally oriented or those who would find less use for knowledge of one language in depth, the report stated.

Officials said that the Government had backed calls for more flexibility, and would talk to the curriculum watchdog about the plans.

The suggestion met with a lukewarm response from experts, including Isabella Moore, the director of CILT, the national centre for languages. She wished to see more students learning languages, but said that it was equally important not to “dumb down the whole process”. “We certainly believe the GCSE needs to be reformed, because getting young people to describe the content of their bedroom is not creating the enthusiasm for study, but I would need to see what this looks like in detail,” she said.

Lord Dearing’s report was enthusiastically received overall.

Alan Johnson, the Education Secretary, pledged to increase spending on language teaching by £50 million a year. “The earlier you start learning a language the better. Making language study compulsory from seven to 14 will give pupils seven years to build up their knowledge, confidence and experience,” he said.

“By the time they reach Key Stage 4 (GCSE-age) pupils will have built up a critical mass of knowledge, and hopefully a love, of languages.”

Steve Sinnott, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said that this must not be done “on the cheap”.

“With a limited number of teachers covering all subjects, small primary schools will have their own special problems in introducing a new subject,” he said.

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